Almost Perfect: the redux

Andrew pointed out that the video from the Almost Perfect residency I was a part of last year has made its way onto YouTube:

Hopefully this will shed a little light on the “what is locative media?” question for some of you!

GPS signal stability in Digbeth, Birmingham

It’s not that grate, akshully.
(click for map of full walk.)

mscape for randomised story-telling

Just before Christmas I responded to a call for artists from a Primary school looking for ways of

• Making use of the “outdoor classroom”
• Exploring the creative potential of ICT
• Enhancing literacy teaching and learning
• Actively involving pupils in documenting their own learning journeys
• Supporting reflexive practice

I think I had my application in – suggesting application of mscape – within an hour of first getting the notification email.

Experience has shown that it can be a bit tricky explaining the principles of the software to people who are not familiar with the technologies involved. Talking sticks to the rescue.

In preparation for meeting with the project coordinators this morning, yesterday I prepared a quick demonstration mediascape to hint at how these things might be used as an impetus for creative narrative. (I’d never been to the school before, and so didn’t attempt to try and create something specific to the location).

Although it was only intended as a quick demo, I’ve become quite taken by the idea so I’m blogging it in case anyone’s interested in providing motivation or situation for putting it into practice. :)

It’s a very simple set-up in terms of the coding involved: just a series of regions placed around the (in this case) school environment with onEnter/onExit events that trigger an alarm that randomly selects a sound file for addition to the playlist.

The interesting bit came when trying to decide what the sound files should consist of.

The context I’m imagining is a small group of pupils carrying a talking stick-esque device around with them as they set off on an improvised adventure around the designated area. This could be based on a classic journeying quest; be it to find an object or explore uncharted lands. Our intrepid adventurers move around in real space, but use their imaginations to reinterpret their surroundings and invent new things within it.

The role of the talking stick-esque device is to randomly interject prompts that the adventurers must respond to in real time within their narratives: if the stick yells out a warning to “hide!”, then hide they must; if the stick wonders if anyone lives here, then they should assess the surroundings and decide if it’s a suitable habitat for whatever characters are in the story…

Here are the prompts I used for the demo: (Many thanks to @goodhen whose response to my twitter request added a large number of these to the list.)

Look out! | What was that noise? | who’s this? | And so, off they went | oh no… | Good news! | Don’t move! | Shhhhh! Listen | What’s that over there in the distance? | Is anyone else getting that strange feeling? | Whatever you do, don’t make any sudden movements… | I think we need a change of plan | Be careful | Quick! What are we going to do? | What’s that smell? | Is there something hiding in there? | What was it he said again? | Quick, run for it! | Hide! | What should we do next? | Is it safe? | Look! Up in the sky! | Oh! That reminds me! | What *is* that?! | I feel weird. What’s happening to me? | I’m hungry | huh, is that an elephant? | I don’t believe it! | Of course! | I knew that was going to happen | oh, wait a minute | hang on | are you sure this is a good idea | what do you think will happen? | [Gasp] | ouch | do you think anyone lives here? | Is it a message?

What type of prompts inject the narrative with the sort of elements that make for a gripping narrative and what sort of prompts inject the narrative with opportunities for pupils to develop the sorts of skills their teachers might be looking for? And are these things different? …oh, and how can they instigate interactions with/responses to the surroundings too?

Also for consideration: How to start off the story – should you set a particular scenario and then can you tailor your prompts to that? Would it work equally well with trigger regions placed randomly, or should they relate to the ‘interesting’ features of the landscape? With more knowledge of yarn-spinning, would it be a good idea to add conditional logic to the prompt selection such that if x has already been played, then do/don’t play y?

landmarks

About 6 months ago I started getting very interested in how people navigate their way around a particular part of the New Forest.

Having now been to The Other Canada I returned to Canada Common a couple of times over the last week or so with the beginnings of an idea to collate the material I gathered from the dog-walkers into a mscape-driven thingy that then presents you with different guidance and instructions depending on where you are and which direction you are heading in.

I still haven’t decided on exactly how I’m going to tackle it, so I just took the opportunity to observe and ponder, trying to place the information people had given me back into the landscape it referred to.

The the GPS trace shows that, despite the cold weather freezing most of the water on the common, there were still a few parts I struggled with (for example, the S shape in the middle of this image as I try and decide how best to cross a small stream!)

[note to self: must take a look at how to import the log into Google Earth – I don’t like all those artefacts that appear on the images imported into mscape]

I have to say though, the best tracks laid that day were the snuffly ones made by the ponies.

This video shows the landscape I’m investigating in 2 revolutions: the first with no markers; and the second with labels indicating some of the landmarks people use to navigate by [warning: not suitable for those prone to sea-sickness].

landmarks from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

A few photos from the walk:

can you get there from here?

This afternoon I went out to a nearby and conveniently large, open area of common to test a new version of the code for the project I started last month.

The code works a treat – which is great – but I can confirm the experience of using it is rubbish without the sticks and someone else to play with.

Can you get there from here? from nikkipugh on Vimeo.